Carbon reporting: Measure It, report it, reduce it

Reducing the Scope 2 and 3 emissions, which happen outside the company offices, required more serious analysis. It requires, among other things, better management of vendors. Like all manufacturing companies, Schneider sources some components locally and imports others. To send a component through surface transport, it needed to know the lead times for sourcing components precisely. "We developed better sales forecasting capabilities ultimately as a result of carbon emission reporting," says Satish Kumar, energy ambassador of Schneider Electric in India.

Cisco, one of the global leaders in the CDP indices, has taken the idea of remote working to extreme levels by Indian standards. Over 20,000 employees in the company have virtual offices linked to each other through telepresence or webex or some other method. This has brought down travel — over 40% in five years — and has also improved work.

"We found that we can make better teams working virtually," says Darrel Stickler, who manages the carbon reporting exercise in Cisco. This was because experts on specific topics were located in different places in the world, and they could all work together from virtual offices.

Reducing Scope 1 emissions, easy for IT companies, is difficult for energy-intensive manufacturing companies. Cement manufacturing is one of the most energyintensive, but cement companies in India have been surprisingly at the forefront of emission reporting.

Cement is manufactured using limestone that releases carbon dioxide, and the process also uses coal, which produces additional carbon dioxide. ACC, for example, is developing methods to use renewable energy instead of coal. Using materials other than limestone is a big technology challenge. "With carbon emission reporting, we have clear plan to reduce our emissions over the next five years," says KN Rao, director of energy and environment of ACC.